The newly-adopted Communist Party disciplinary regulations increase the control and punishment for religious beliefs of political cadres.
On August 26, 2018, the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) issued the newly revised Disciplinary Regulations of the Chinese Communist Party, which set the fundamental guidelines for the conduct of the Party members. The document further enhances the core leadership status of President Xi Jinping’s and sets rigorous management and disciplinary regulations of political cadres’ religious beliefs. The punitive measures for party members violating the rules have been increased and are called “the strictest in history.”
Bitter Winter has received information that previously, Zhang Minghua, deputy director of a county’s Human Resources and Social Security Bureau in Luoyang city, Henan Province was terminated from his job, expelled from the party, and demoted to a regular staff position for carrying a “certificate of conversion.”
In 2016, addressing China’s National Religious Working Conference, President Xi Jinping repeatedly stressed that, “Communists must be staunch Marxist atheists” and “must never look for their own values and beliefs in religion.” He emphasized that “it is a matter of political discipline that Communists must not be religious.”
Reported by Feng Gang
Feng Gang (uses pseudonyms for security reasons), who was born in Zhejiang Province, China in 1986 and currently resides in Shanxi Province, worked at a TV station in Shanxi after graduating from university. In 2015, Feng Gang and some friends cofounded their own independent media outlet. In May 2018, he became a special correspondent of Bitter Winter covering Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei Province, Shanxi Province, and some other regions in China.